We all know what follows a strenuous workout session in the gym: sore muscles, achy joints, and fatigue. Also, if you do weight lifting frequently, your muscles are likely to get worn down. Therefore, you require muscle rehab attention.
Perhaps you do not want to hit the gym the next day when you can barely walk up the stairs in your apartment.
So, you can say that muscle recovery is also a part of your fitness training program as it optimizes your performance. Sore-free muscles keep you healthy and help you meet your training goals. But how do you recover your muscles?
Well, several over-the-counter quick muscle recovery supplements provide essential nutrients to your body. So, regular intake of these substances promotes muscle repair, reduces muscle soreness, and maximizes the effectiveness of your training.
Read on to know everything about muscle recovery and supplements to speed up muscle repair.
What is Muscle Recovery?
Muscle recovery refers to the time between the end of a workout session and the beginning of your next one.
If this time is not associated with discomfort and by the time you exercise again, you feel fresh, pleasant, and energetic, then you’ve experienced muscle recovery.
Nevertheless, if this time is associated with excessive discomfort and you feel like dragging yourself to the gym the next day, perhaps you’ve experienced bad muscle repair.
But what is the cause of the latter scenario? Well, here are a few contributing factors:
- Your body is deprived of essential nutrients, protein, and calories.
- You didn’t sleep or rest well.
- You do vigorous exercise in the gym, work out too frequently, or a combination of both.
So, taking adequate nutrients, adjusting your lifestyle, and not overdoing it in the gym help you repair your muscles. Thus, you are reenergized for your next workout, thereby boosting your performance.
What are Muscle Recovery Supplements?
Quick muscle recovery supplements are substances that help your muscles recover from workout #1 before workout #2.
These supplements can be categorized into one of the following groups:
- Anti-inflammatory supplements that reduce muscle soreness. Ideally, those that do not impair muscle growth.
- Supplements that increase metabolite clearance (ammonia, lactate, etc.) and eliminate muscle discomfort following it.
- Improve the ability of muscle cells to absorb nutrition, resulting in a faster recovery.
Muscle damage and indicators for muscle damage are insufficient to demonstrate that something aids recovery. This is primarily because preventing muscle damage does not aid recovery.
Perhaps we need damage to grow muscles, and we can consider this workout partial if we prevent this damage outright.
Why? Since you prevented the damage and stopped your muscles from healing and growing fully.
In other words, popping an Ibuprofen might not be a good idea in the long run. Nevertheless, you have a few alternatives. Read on to grab on a few!
10 Quick Muscle Recovery Supplements
Want to maximize your workout performance? Here are ten quick muscle recovery supplements to reduce fatigue, aid muscle repair, and boost your performance.
1. Creatine
Creatine helps to reduce oxidative damage to the DNA that might occur during a workout. In addition, studies show that it regulates calcium homeostasis, muscle inflammation and activates satellite cells.
While it does help in muscle repair, the underlying mechanisms of creatine are not fully understood and are still under review.
Nevertheless, Creatine can help reduce muscle soreness, especially if you do the same exercise every day.
German Creatine brings you premium Creatine, maintaining its strict quality control standards.
What else is good? It’s available in two palatable flavors: watermelon and grape. You can mix it in your favorite beverage or water (depends on your preferences).
It will not only aid muscle recovery but hydrate muscle cells and promote muscle fiber growth simultaneously.
2. Fish Oil
Omega-3 fish oil is yet another quick muscle recovery supplement. While many people believe its use is limited to heart health and anxiety reduction, taking fish oil can significantly plummet muscle damage caused by strenuous workouts.
Also, many gym-goers feel lethargic and sick after exercising; however, fish oil boosts immunity, making them energetic for their next workout.
Additionally, research shows that fish oil protects motor neurons after vigorous and prolonged exercise. Therefore, consider taking fish oil capsules if you want to prevent muscle damage and increase your immunity.
Health Dose Fish Oil comes in lemon flavor with 120 softgels in each bottle. You can take these supplements before or after the exercise (it’s best to consult your fitness trainer).
3. Magnesium
If your workout is robbing you of sleep, you need to consider incorporating magnesium into your diet.
Magnesium is a nutrient that plays a critical role in our body. Unfortunately, around 50 percent of the U.S. population consumes inadequate levels of magnesium. This number increases to 75 in women.
Research indicates that individuals who consume Magnesium supplements show improvement in their exercise performance. But how does this happen? Mg intake reduces muscle tension, contributes to flexibility, and prevents muscle injury by loosening the tight muscle cells.
So, if you want your muscles to relax properly after an exercise, consider consuming Magnesium Supplement regularly. It will provide optimal health to your bones and muscles, helping you prepare for your next workout.
4. L-Glutamine
Perhaps sore muscles are the culprit to reduced exercise performance. No one feels like exercising with achy muscles and painful joints. Nevertheless, L-Glutamine, a quick muscle recovery supplement, has you covered!
A study examined the effects of L-Glutamine supplements on muscle soreness and strength. Results showed that L-Glutamine diminishes muscle soreness and strengthens the muscles simultaneously.
Therefore, incorporating an L-Glutamine supplement into your diet is an excellent idea to maintain muscle protein, gain muscle strength, and burn fat.
Nutricost L-Glutamine powder is gluten-free and non-GMO with 5000mg of L-Glutamine powder per serving.
You can mix it in water, milk, or flavored juice and drink it before exercising. So what are you waiting for? Get your energy and endurance up at the gym with this wonderous dietary supplement.
5. Whey Protein
Many athletes use Whey Protein to prevent soreness and promote muscle mass. But what exactly is this dietary supplement? And where does it come from?
Well, it comes from milk. Milk essentially has two proteins: casein and whey. Whey can be separated from casein and is often used as a by-product for cheese-making.
Whey is a complete protein as it contains nine essential amino acids and is relatively low in lactose content.
Studies indicate that Whey Protein reduces muscle fatigue and maintains and promotes lean muscle mass growth.
So, if you want to reap the benefits of this dietary supplement, consider incorporating a Whey Protein supplement in your diet.
Six Star offers you a range of flavors: chocolate, cookies and cream, strawberry, vanilla, and triple chocolate, respectively.
You can mix one scoop of powder in milk or water (per your preferences) and drink up after exercise. It will help you recover your muscles and improve your performance simultaneously.
6. Tart Cherry Juice Extract
According to Oregon Health & Science University researchers, tart cherry juice can be a safer option to treat muscle soreness and inflammation than over-the-counter pain relievers like Ibuprofen.
Kerry Kuehl, M.D., Associate professor, adds further, “The bottom line is that those runners who used tart cherry juice had less inflammation and faster muscle strength recovery.” Hence, it shows that tart cherry juice can act as an effective supplement for repairing muscles after a workout.
Furthermore, a 2019 study notes, “TCJ can accelerate recovery after intermittent exercise.”
So, if you want to consume TCJ to quicken muscle repair, you can consider taking Tart Cherry Capsules by PURELY Beneficial before exercising.
Also, these capsules are easy-to-swallow and low-calorie; hence, they won't interfere with your diet plans.
Regular consumption of these capsules will prevent oxidative damage induced by weight lifting or vigorous exercises.
Also read: Is Swedish Massage a Good Massage? A Therapeutic Massage Style You Should Try!
7. Multivitamins
Multivitamins are a combination of several vitamins that are typically found in foods and other natural substances. If your body is deficient in multivitamins, it will likely cause you more trouble after an exercise.
In other words, a person with adequate multivitamin intake is less likely to experience sore muscles, and their muscle repair is quicker. On the other hand, if you are deficient in vitamins, you will be prone to sore muscles, and your body will take time to recover.
If you are from the latter group, perhaps you need to regulate the intake of multivitamins.
Centrum Multivitamin tablets will improve your muscle repair process while supporting your bone health. Packed with vitamin C, B, E, zinc, and more, Centrum tablets will refreshen you and help you kickstart the day at the gym with rejuvenated energy and strength.
8. BCAA
BCAA (Branched-Chain Amino Acids) is one of the most widely used quick muscle recovery supplements and for the right reasons.
Studies indicate that taking BCAA supplementation before exercise plummets the delayed onset of muscle soreness.
Further, another 2009 research concludes that BCAA supplements reduce fatigue sensation and muscle soreness. Hence, BCAA intake can help you get rid of achy, annoying muscles that otherwise inhibit your workout performance.
Carlye BCAA Supplement provides you with a blend of Branched Chain Amino Acids, L-Leucine, L-Valine, and L-Isoleucine, all in a single capsule.
The jar comes with 400 quick muscle recovery capsules. You can consider ingesting one before you hit the gym, as it is designed to support athletic strength and boost immunity.
9. Electrolytes
Since our bodies cannot produce sodium magically, proper muscle recovery requires you to replace these ions. And what is the best way to do it? Pre and post-workout electrolyte consumption.
Studies indicate that electrolyte intake quickens the restoration of hydration and enhances the rate of muscle glycogen resynthesis.
So, if you experience muscle soreness and tension after leaving the gym, perhaps you need to increase electrolyte intake. Otherwise, your physical function will hang in the balance due to low electrolyte levels.
Nunn Sport brings you strawberry lemonade flavored electrolyte drink tablets. You can dissolve a tablet in water and drink it up!
Nevertheless, make sure you drink it before a workout if you want to maximize its effectiveness.
10. Beta-Alanine
Our body produces Beta-Alanine, a non-essential amino acid. One of its primary functions is to boost muscle Carnosine levels. Carnosine, on the other hand, stabilizes the acidity of muscle tissue (which is pretty common after a strenuous exercise)
After a high-intensity workout, lactic acid builds up in our muscles which reduces pH levels. Consequently, our body undergoes fatigue which plummets our performance.
Nevertheless, Carnosine minimizes both of these effects, and Beta-Alanine elevates carnosine levels in our body.
Hence, the intake of Beta-Alanine can reduce after-exercise fatigue and boost our performance.
Additionally, a study published in the Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition concludes that B-Alanine enhances exercise performances and aids muscle recovery.
BULKSUPPLEMENTS.COM brings clean and pure premium quality Beta-Alanine supplements that will enhance your athletic performance by aiding in muscle repair and burning body fat.
Bonus Tips to Maximize Muscle Recovery
While quick muscle recovery supplements help greatly, you can try a few other natural ways to maximize muscle recovery at home.
- Make sure you get adequate sleep. Sometimes, lack of sleep and rest can lead to muscle soreness and delay muscle recovery. Therefore, a good night’s sleep is essential for preparing yourself for your next workout.
- Has muscle soreness and pain slowed you down? Consider a massage with Exogun. It will boost circulation and quicken up your muscle recovery. You can do a self-massage or ask someone to do it for you.
- While you might underestimate this one, staying hydrated is essential for healing your muscles. So make sure you drink enough water before and during the exercise.
- Try an ice bath. Ice baths change the way blood and other fluids regulate your body, thus, aiding in muscle repair after high-intensity workouts.
Bottomline
When you hit the store to buy a muscle recovery supplement, you’ll likely come across various dietary supplements, and you can have a hard time choosing the best one.
Nevertheless, we’ve compiled a list of some of the best quick muscle recovery supplements to help you select the one that works best for you!